bread wars

so next week is bread wars 2007. that means that next saturday all the employees of your local village baker are gonna come in on their day off and compete for the title of ultimate bread warrior. instead of a company bbq we all get together and try to show up each other in various tests of bakerism. builds connections, that sort of thing.

bread wars consists of completing various tasks and earning points for superiority, kinda like a ranking system. one event is moving five 40 lb bags of flower from the oven area to the bread forming table with the big wooden bread spear spatula thingy that you move things in the oven with. fastest time wins. another is the prettiest loaf contest where you have to, well, make an extremely pretty loaf of bread. the bosses wife judges that one. there's also a quiz show part where we have to answer random questions like how many months pregnant the bosses wife is or name all of the specialty breads. the ciabatta toss and timed slicing are where i hope to gain some points, i'm not sure about the other baking things tho.

oh there's also the extreme mopping, where you choose a 6x6 patch of floor anywhere in the bakery and clean it as fast as you can. you get to choose because if you choose a dirtier area you can barter with the big boss man to get time removed from your final time since you chose a dirtier area. it's a lot like poker.


why do we do this you ask, well the winner gets a fifty cent raise for 6 months or until you don't work there anymore. whichever happens first. during this time, any other employee can challenge you for the title in any one event. if they win they get the raise for the remainder of the 6 months, if they lose they lose ten cents of pay an hour for a month and the winner gets ten cents more for a month. so only challenge someone if you know you're gonna win or if you just don't care.

also, if the boss wins the grand champion spot we all have to come in on the following saturday and clean the store like we're selling it on ebay, without being paid. so we have some motivation to be better than our boss. he wants to get his store cleaned too, otherwise he has to pay us to do that twice a year or so. it also gives us a reason to actually try and make an event out of it, shit is at stake here.

if you're around next saturday stop by and cheer me on. i think there's free bread somewhere.




p.s. i made this all up.